Humana Says Medicare Enrollment Looks Good

Executives from Humana said Wednesday that the Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D prescription drug plan annual election period for 2023 is going well.

The enrollment period started Oct. 15 and is set to end Dec. 7.

Bruce Broussard, the company’s CEO, told securities analysts that his company expects to increase the number of individual Medicare Advantage plan enrollees by 7.1% to 8.7% in 2023.

Humana has 5 million Medicare Advantage plan enrollees and an 18% share of total Medicare Advantage plan enrollment, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that oversees Medicare plans, has implemented new marketing disclosure and call recording rules, in an effort to keep marketers and sales representatives from describing plans incorrectly.

Analysts have wondered what the new rules might do to sales.

At Humana, “what we are seeing is that new sales volume has been strong and higher than expected,” Broussard said. “Our close ratios are higher year-over-year than versus what our expectations are. And, in addition, our field sales volumes are particularly strong.”

Sales through call centers are down slightly, year over year, he said.

Earnings

Broussard spoke during a call Humana held to go over earnings for the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30.

The company reported $1.2 billion in revenue for the quarter on $23 billion in revenue, compared with $1.5 billion in net income on $21 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2021.

Here’s what happened to enrollment for some products:

• Individual Medicare Advantage: 4.6 million (up from 4.4 million).
• Group Medicare Advantage: 564,600 (up from 559,800).
• Medicare supplement insurance: 316,500 (down from 332,000).
• Stand-alone Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage: 3.57 million (down from 3.64 million).

Pictured: Bruce Broussard (Photo: Andrea Yanks/White House)